Greyscale Gorilla

Greyscalegorilla is an active community and resource for training and tools for the public. And makes learning the skills needed, to use the software the website offers tutorials for, by creating easy to follow tutorials and training techniques that show their audience more about how to use these programmes as well as tips and advise when using them.

http://greyscalegorilla.com

Spike Ball GIF Tutorial:
http://greyscalegorilla.com/tutorials/create-an-all-fuzzed-out-spike-ball-with-mograph-and-effectors/

I liked this tutorial as i gave you a lot of information about what it was the tutorial was going to be showing the audience how to use and explained what tools were needed to do it (e.g. C4dR16/17) before even having to play the video which is useful as it gives you a heads up before you start it.  

 the tutorial explains how to set up a looping noise to drive Mograph and create your very own film-noir fuzz ball.

it first shows you how toast up the ball with a Mograph Cloner and how to use Cinema 4D’s noise maps to drive a Shader Effector.
These skills and examples could also be adapted and applied to different work as well so its not just creating a copy of what the tutorial is making but instead applying it to your own work. But the skill are still being taught. The tutorial also touches on color correction, film grain, and camera shake were added in the comp.

Still shot of the finished product tutorial shows you how to make 

I think this is a good tutorial as it seems to be reasonably passed so would be easy to keep up with and teaches these useful techniques by applying them in an interesting way that makes a creative gif piece.


Melting Objects, using jiggle deformer:

I liked this tutorial also available on grey scale gorilla website as it relate to the style that i tend to incorporate in my work often of using paint or ink markings/ movements in my work and so this trial could come in handy for one of my ideas down the line.

                  

the tutorial how you can quickly and easily create melting like effects using the Jiggle Deformer. It starts by modeling the lollipop, then uses Weight/Vertex Maps to define which parts of our lollipop geometry you want to melt. Next,it shows how to use Pose Morph tag to be able to animate the drips via animating the Vertex Maps. The tutorial finishes off by texturing our lollipop to make it look like a candy material.

Character Rigging Tutorial:

Another tutorial that i thought would come in handy in the future it this tutorial on rigging characters. 

                    

This could be applied to not necessarily a 'character' but any object and element i want to move in different parts etc and so is probably something i would refer back to at some point.
The tutorial introduces you into the to rigging in Cinema 4D by showing you a workflow method to easily create a simple cartoonish arm & leg IK rig. It explains normal IK rigs bend sharp at the elbow and knees of characters but it’s hard to get a smooth bend like a cartoon character. so it start out by introducing he two types of rigs, FK (Forward Kinematics) and IK (Inverse Kinematics). Then demonstrates how to set up an IK rig to rig a hamburger characters arms & legs and connecting them to the body. Finally,it shows you how to use Pose Morph to animate your character. it also explains that If you’re not familiar with Pose Morph,to find extra help in the link provided (http://www.eyedesyn.com/tutorials/animating-baymax-using-the-cinema-4d-pose-morph-tag/)

Trends

In motion graphics you can always spot trends.And recently there have been noticeably more and more liquid animation style animations and advertisements present in the industry after the previously popular trends of: 

AXONOMETRIC PROJECTION

                    

Whiteboard Animation

HANDCRAFT

This style often blends live-action elements with CGI components to give the audience a sense of wonder and intrigue. There is always something magical or endearing when we see craft work created by tangible materials come to life. When we throw in an external factor such as a pair of hands or a stick prodding a wheel, it becomes 'human' powered. It brings a smile to your face, because face it – when we don't understand how something came to be visually, subconsciously, we go to our default 'oh, its a CGI thing'. When we are able to see how the cogs integrate and work with each other, we appreciate it more. Here are some examples.

http://www.invisibleartists.com/trends/ 

liquid animation is where shapes are smeared and splash back together, often at the moment of a peak in the action, moving in slight slow motion, with twists and bends. It kind of resembles the flowerpower / psychedelic shapes known from the 60’s.
One of the earlier motion graphics with this appearance, were some of the videos of the advertising agencies CRCR and Buck (2 years ago). one example that appeared already in 2008 is the video Orgesticulanismus by Mathieu Labaye.


REALISATION : Mathieu Labaye
ASSISTANT REALISATION : Sébastien Godard
MUSIQUE : Fabian Forini et Mathieu Labaye
PRODUCTEUR : Jean-Luc Slock 
PRODUCTION : Camera-etc

 And you can find this same kind of movement in earlier anime movies. Abstract drops and smears, swirling typography, and even characters  whose limbs are being stretched and swirled.

Liquid animation examples:

                         

Motion Graphics Trend: Liquid Motion from in60seconds on Vimeo.
Liquid motion elements v.2.1 from Taras Ryabokon on Vimeo.

                    

i do quite like this style of animation as it is a beautiful way of making the visuals flow and to keep a lively atmosphere to a piece. It is in keeping with the kin of style i like and often involve in my work also as i usually like to incorporate paint and ink markings shapes and movements in some ways (which can be seen in my earlier void life void projects along with my audio recording project and the competition brief project)i also like how this allows the creator to morph shapes into each other easily and in as many bazaar and interesting ways as they want.

State Design

STATE Design is a boutique design and animation studio based in Santa Monica. They are a small studio that states on their website that "We believe in strategically staying small to maintain a personal connection with our clients while dreaming big creatively."

STATE Design:
Creative Director: Marcel Ziul
Head of Production: Alex dos Santos
Animators: Shawn Lee, Marcel Ziul, Dennis Moran, Danni Fisher-Shin, Luis Suarez
Designer: Bruna Imai, Marcel Ziul
Coordinator: Natalia Baldochi

Marcel Ziul is the studio’s founder and creative director, whose 14-year career speaks for itself: freelancer at Belief Design, Prologue Films, Stardust Studios and others, Emmy Award nominee and Promax BDA finalist.

Recently, STATE celebrated Veterans Day with a juicy spot for Syfy

Still from “Veterans Day”

What state design said about making this piece:

When we first spoke to them (syfy), they had a relatively simple and elegant concept. It was more about textures and tasteful patriotic scenes. The project was creatively open-ended, so we kind of thought, “Let’s make this spot extra special for them.” We love 2D and cel animation, and we had been wanting to do more of it for a while now. So we started by creating some really nice illustrative boards. The client loved the boards. It always helps when your client loves the boards! From there it was a pretty smooth process. We brought in some very talented young animators who just shined on the project. They took ownership of the process — and I think that it shows in the final product. And it also helped that we had super supportive clients in Syfy who basically left us to our own devices in elevating their initial concept

                    
SyFy / NBCUniversal - Veterans Day from STATE DESIGN on Vimeo.

This animation has a lively positive and upbeat style which relates to the point it is making but also has a serious undertone with the voice narrative and the fact that they have kept to a colour pallet that is not too overpowering and a mostly white background, bringing it back down to the level it is appropriate to be on in terms of energy due to the nature of the subject matter. The style as well that has been used is a liquid animation in which characters and shapes seem to flow into one another and have the appearance of paint or ink slightly. This has been a popular trending form of animation recently showing how the studio is potentially keeping up with popular trends. 

More about the studio:

Marcel Ziul talks about the studio in an interview with motionographer and gives some interesting insight.
He explains how he has always wanted to open his own studio was to open a studio where he would want to work as a freelancer. And a place where artists have a voice, are looking to do amazing work and have fun doing it. Where the goal isn’t about making quick cash. Showing the passion behind his idea and for his craft. He says that the environment he has created with the team is more important than having flashy programmes and that the focus is on creating the work itself and working together well.
Ziul states that there’s no small project when the studio is small and every project is an opportunity for us to express ourselves.

"Being a smaller shop requires us to have people who are very engaged and proactive. We have the opportunity to get more involved with each project and create a unique relationship with our clients. We are all willing to wear multiple hats."

Still on the topic of the size of State Design studio Marcel also talks about the challenges of owning a small independent studio and explains that the challenges that occur can be finding talent, staying profitable, finding clients, finding style and pitching against the big guys (larger studios with perhaps more staff and higher budgets). These challenges are all things that i can consider with regards to how to present my self and prepare for when i am trying to look for a job too as they all relate to my situation in one way or another although they may not be the same situations i will be faced with. 

He states in this interview that "the idea of done is good enough can be a death sentence for a small studio like us" which is a nice piece of information that i should take note from as this is a similar challenge i have with my work (although i am not making work for clients just yet), working within deadlines does often make me cut corners with my work slightly and not push my work to the standard it could be especially when it comes to finishing touches and if i made enough time could easily be pushed further, however it is important for me to do this more as i can use my work for show reels etc and so all work is important and coming back to touch them up at the end can be time consuming or it could have been so long since i made it that i have miss placed programme files etc. 

"When I was a freelancer, I used to focus on the technical and creative side of projects. As a business owner, I have to focus on both business and creative — find that sweet spot that is not necessarily right in the middle on every project. It allows me to see the business as a whole and really understand the importance of every person at the studio from executive producers to interns. It feels like going from a macro lens to a fisheye."(ziul)

Manchester art gallery review

I recently visited Manchester art gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, which is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three connected buildings, two of which were designed by Sir Charles Barry. Both Barry's buildings are listed. The building that links them was designed by Hopkins Architects following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions. It opened in 2002 following a major renovation and expansion project undertaken by the art gallery.

Manchester Art Gallery is free to enter and open seven days a week. It houses many works of local and international significance and has a collection of more than 25,000 objects. More than half a million people visited the museum in the period of a year, according to figures released in April 2014.

While visiting this gallery I was thinking about my key word essay and looking out for pieces of work that could relate to my essay that interested me to potentially use for my essay as examples. I also found a few sculptures that were inspiring for my main project (the channel ident) that related to biological and mutational forms that inspired some founding ideas for my sci Fi channel ident and I ended up adapting my idea from these sculptures (I have written about these pieces in my channel ident blog post). 

what it looks like inside:
the front entrance hall had a rather regal visual feel to it with regards to the sculptures in the walls and the wall paper swell as the layout of the room with the steps leading off into different directions etc. 

however there were some rooms that had more modern appearances moving away from this older more regal style and representing the contents of the gallery on a whole which displays both modern and classic art. 

Sappho 1877 by Mengin Charles August. Oil painting on canvas Sappho was a Greek poet who lived around 600BC. She wrote about love, yearning and reflection, often dedicating her poems to the female pupils who studied with her on the island of Lesbos. Many stories are told about her. Mengin has chosen to paint one that says she threw herself into the sea because of unrequited love for a young man: (Still holding in that fearful leap By her loved lyre) into the deep, And dying, quenched the fatal fire At once, of both her heart and lyre.

The room this painting was situated in was an old looking style of rich red walls and wooden floor and furnishings and golden frames an all the paintings. This gave a warmer and more timely feel to the paintings environment and represented the painting itself in this manner showing its years of history reflected in the style of the room. The room was also quiet and echoey which created more of a personal connection to the painting as though looking at it was like looking into a portal or means of connection to its time of creation. 

The painting of the girl was very large and took up the. Amorites of wall height in the room almost reaching the ceiling. This represented the woman in a more realistic powerful and looming way as she was about the actual height a young woman would be nowhere due to where the painting was placed was looking down from above the viewer unmissable and very sad looking. Making this emotion being displayed more intense and more sorrowful. 

The woman wears all black in a gloomy landscape next to a miserable and stormy sea alone. She holds a harp that would represent music joy and liveliness but is instead held by her side as a cruel taunt against her misery and emotional exhaustion. The woman's breast are exposed perhaps representing the lust the poem speaks of (that the painting is based on) but this lust is overpowered by the black viel and sad expression on the woman's face and could combined represent the dangers and heart ache of love and lust. 

Untitled smoke series:
this was a piece in the gallery that was labeled as an unlisted artist and so i was unable to find out who made it however i liked the description and theme for these pieces which was based on the phrase 'smoke and mirrors' that describes a dishonest or imaginary act. The phrase originates from the traditional magic trick in which objects are made to disappear and reappear by moving mirrors whilst the audience is distracted by bursts of smoke as this happenes. 

and so although the piece shows smoke it is possibly representing this theme of somthing being a lie or not real/ a mystery, much like that of the origin (the creator). 

Bestie 2014 Joana Vasconcelos (faience ceramic and crocheted lace)

Portuguese artists joana vasconcelos has taken serious sculpture and subverted it by covering it with crotched lace. She has taken a masculine art form and overlaid it with a craft traditionally seen as feminine to give this piece a more feminist visual effect. 
The horses head that vasconcelos has appropriated is by rafael bordalo pinhiero (1846-1905), a renowned ninetieth century Portuguese artist. His factory still exists and produces ceramics. The lace is made by craftspeople in the Azores to traditional designs. 

This piece could be representing how women can do what ever men can do from a feminist point of view. 

Hylas and the nymphs 1896 John william waterhouse 

Oil on canvas

This pieces is based on the myth of Jason and the argonauts. Hylas who was one of the argonauts who sailed with Jason in search of the golden fleece. When the adventurers harboured on an island Hylas' task was to search for fresh water for the crew. He found a faded spring and was filling his pitcher when he was encircled by nymphs. Hypnotically they drew him into the water and although his friends searched for him he was never found again. 

This piece could be a representation of temptation and giving into temptations. 

Home gallery in manchester

HOME is a centre for international contemporary art, theatre and film in Manchester that opened on 24 April 2015. as part of the First Street development. HOME was formed by the merger of two Manchester-based arts organisations, Cornerhouse and the Library Theatre Company.


HOME will commission, produce and present a programme of contemporary theatre, film, and visual art. The programme will feature new commissions, international collaborations, off-site and interdisciplinary productions, with an emphasis on innovative visual storytelling and cross-art form collaboration.

The exhibition space in the building that I visited was quiet enclosed and dark and was very intreeging. It had a very sci Fi feel to it with binary codes on the walls lit up and mathematical equations and videos and displays of robots and bright lights. 

One piece that was being displayed here that was very beautiful was the creator which consisted of 2 pieces in 2 separate rooms. One room was titled 1954 and the other 2154 with one room being future and the other being the past. In the 2154 room superstitious robots are
displayed consulting tarot cards as they contemplate the future and in the 1954 room it shows these machines traveling back in time in search for Allan Turing father of the computer age who sewed the seeds for artificial intelligence. The film focused and is based on the dream dairies and conversations Turing had with his physiotherapist in time leading towards the last moments of his life.

The colours and music combined with the subject content in the future room were beautiful and completely mesmerising and had a meditation all feel to it as well as other worldly and bazaar and the combination of the futuristic robots used superticious tarot cards was an intriguing aspect.

Screen shots from this animation:

Visual representation of one of the carrot cards:

 The robots placing the carrot cards down to see what they have to tell:

 

Although when i visited this gallery i did not stay long i will defiantly visit here again as the work was very intriguing and there was more of HOME that i have not yet seen that i would be interested to go back to view. 

Garry Cook

26/2/16

I attended a talk with photographer Garry Cook a freelance journalist and photographer based in Britain.
 He has written and photographed for over 40 national and international newspapers and magazines and reported on stories and social issues around the world and has published several documentary photography books, he is also a photographic theorist who has experimented with imagery on products in an attempt to promote photography as an art form.    

He explained that much of his work is now presented in multi-media style – video and photographic slideshows with audio.
The first thing he did in the talk was preform his 'These are outsiders' Piece in which he incorporates photography and film and live performance. In this performance music is playing as the audio and there is a video playing in the background of him holding photographic images to go with the spoken word. On top of this he was stood next to this video holding up signs to go with it, changing each sign when necessary to go with the video.

He explained that this performance photography he was doing was inspired by performance poetry and theatre and that he wanted to find a way to make people engage more with photographic work as he found out that on average people in a gallery would spend about 40 seconds to view a sculpture or painting however only 25 seconds of viewing photography work. And he wanted to challenge this idea of engaging viewers for longer and reconnecting people to the world of photography. 

He started talking to us about how he managed to get jobs at the start of his career and explained that there is more money in performance photography which is a happy bonus for him but explained that this is because when working for a theatre group there is more people and money money to help and support the artist where as a photographer is basically solo.



Most of Cooks work has been documentary photography and street photography and he explained that he very rarely uses studio lighting or set ups. And because of this a lot of the people he takes pictures of at just everyday people on the streets meaning he can sometimes get bad reactions from them and the job takes a certain amount of confidence and a ready state for bad reactions occasionally.
Cook went on to explain how he is frequently asked to work for free as a photographer especially when he would display his work on sites like Flickr for an audience to see which is obviously a good way of getting your work known however he said that this leads the buyers to think they can have it for free often.
He said self promotion is good to a certain level however there is a line between promoting yourself and being exploited and not receiving the earnings you are entitled to. This is a good piece of advice to keep in mind in my work.
He said that from his experience university's and art festivals are good places to do work for as more work often leads from these jobs and one thing that he did mention that was interesting is that he said he found lots of jobs by entering the arts world instead on just photography that he would have never known existed for him had he not been active in these communities or different environments. Taking  wisdom from this piece of advice I would summarise that it is a good idea to be active and interested in more from of art and media that just that of the obvious path of my chosen profession.